Dalliston Dias fled the country this month amid intense scrutiny from Immigration over treatment of the workers at his Dunedin-based painting business. Rob Kidd reports on the broken hearts and the broken promises he has left in his wake after 11 years in New Zealand.
Dallis, 28: “Looking to see what goes Latin guy just looking to chill hang out and see what happens.”
His sincerity was as absent as his punctuation.
Dalliston Lima Dias’ profile photo for the Tinder dating app had him looking suave and relaxed.
Dressed in a suit, a white rose pinned to his lapel, hands in pockets, aviator sunglasses; he was a picture of Brazilian cool.
It was taken on the day of his March 2015 wedding to Jane*, a woman he had met at church six months earlier, soon after he arrived in New Zealand.
A second photo of him on the dating account enjoying a beer amidst empty plates at a restaurant was taken on their Australian honeymoon.
In 2017, Jane’s sister was sitting on a bus in Wellington peeking over the shoulder of the woman in front, watching her swipe through potential matches on Tinder, enjoying the tiny thrill of the vicariousness.
Then there was a face she recognised.
She and her husband set up a burner account and swept through dozens of men before they found their brother-in-law.
They sent the screenshots to Jane who was at home in Christchurch while Dias, a painter-decorator was working in the capital.
“It’s not me, babe, I promise. I would never do that to you. I’ve obviously been hacked,” he told her.
A lie.
Dias would not be the first man to deceive his wife, nor the first to trawl for casual sex on dating apps behind his partner’s back.
But with him, the lies ran deeper.
This month, nearly 11 years on from his doomed marriage, the 36-year-old returned to Brazil, with unerring timing.
The list of victims had grown; from girlfriends to employees, clients to trade suppliers, people were looking for Dalliston Dias.
The debts were mounting. The net was closing.
Immigration New Zealand had launched an inquiry into the alleged exploitation of employees and the possible trafficking of migrants to work at his Dunedin company Level Up Decorators.
It is understood there have been more recent allegations made to police, though they would not confirm any ongoing investigations on privacy grounds.
The Otago Daily Times has spoken to dozens of people affected by Dias and viewed numerous documents showing a pattern of substandard or incomplete work, which has seen him hauled before the Disputes Tribunal several times.
It was 2018 when Dias’ duplicity really bore its teeth.
Greig Russell put a call out on Facebook for a painter to do some work on his Christchurch home while he was away on holiday.
Dias got in touch, telling him he owned a decorating business and the deal was done.
Mr Russell agreed to advance him $5000 for materials and left town.
When he returned, he “flipped out”.
“He basically tried to f… my house, done a pretty good job of it,” Mr Russell said.
“The paint on the roof was peeling … the ceiling had just had one lick over of paint, so you could see fly shit through it.”
Dias only returned to the address once Mr Russell had assured him of his safety.
“I said ‘well I’ve got two mates here so they’re going to stop me from killing you’,” Mr Russell said.
He confiscated Dias’ car and said he would have it wrecked if his money was not returned in 48 hours.
When Dias returned to stump up the cash, with a pastor from his church in tow, Mr Russell had him sign a typed statement, admitting a list of oversights amounting to “shoddy workmanship”.
Critically, in the document, the tradie admitted misrepresenting himself as the owner of the business, which was later informed of his lies.
There followed revelations that Dias had established a pattern of billing customers, giving them his own bank details.
Police were contacted.
When news filtered through to his wife Jane, it led her to scrutinise their own finances, of which her husband had total control.
“He always said he would take care of me, that I didn’t have to work. So I closed my personal bank account, he had his own and we kind of just lived off that,” she said.
When Jane looked at the bank records there were the usual outgoings coded as rent, power, broadband but when she viewed the individual transactions they were transfers to another of Dias’ accounts.
She had her wedding ring cut off her finger and kicked him out. It was over.
“I had nothing, absolutely nothing,” Jane said.
Dias later pleaded guilty to four counts of obtaining by deception and two of theft in a special relationship, over the company fraud, and was sentenced to 300 hours’ community work at the Dunedin District Court in November 2020.
By 2025, Dias had been at the helm of Level Up Decorators Limited in Dunedin for a couple of years.
Bex Hill met him after organising a fishing charter for him and some mates and Dias said he had chosen the name for his company “to show everyone that he’s going up in the world”.
As a business owner herself, she understood.
“We got on, chitty-chatty; he looked all right, wears nice watches, you know, very well kept,” she said.
But shortly after meeting, Dias confided in Ms Hill about his financial woes.
He had been ripped off and people owed him $50,000 for work he had done, he told her.
“I can’t even buy paint to finish my jobs,” Dias said.
He asked Ms Hill for $5000 to tide him over.
“I felt really uncomfortable,” she said.
Ms Hill made excuses about her own money problems to put him off but he later reduced the figure to $1500.
She did not bite, but they remained in contact.
Shortly after, Dias was organising a trip to Fiji with his mates and asked Ms Hill to book his flights, saying he would reimburse her.
He had $8000 in air points, he claimed.
“I’m not your bloody PA,” Ms Hill told him.
But Dias managed to convince her to help in another way.
He said he had taken his Google business page down because of unfair negative reviews and asked Ms Hill to post a glowing testimonial on Builderscrack, a site designed to unite homeowners with trusted tradespeople.
She thought little of it but her brief statement caught the eye of Heidi* who got in touch to explain the ordeal Dias had inflicted upon her.
At the end of 2024, the Disputes Tribunal had ordered Level Up to pay her $3018 for a deposit she paid for painting the exterior of her home.
Heidi told the ODT Dias seemed “very personable” but the problems were soon evident.
“He didn’t turn up on the date, he didn’t have the equipment, his staff didn’t seem to ever know what’s going on,” she said.
“Then he started harassing me like for payment and the job was clearly badly done or not done at all.”
The tribunal decision was a win only in writing.
Heidi never saw the money and a financial assessment hearing scheduled for February 2025 could not go ahead because bailiffs were unable to find Dias.
Two months later, the court issued a warrant to seize property from Level Up but, again, it could not be served.
“Debtor left his address. Building vacant,” court documents noted.
Ms Hill sensed something amiss and her natural curiosity led her to make a series of social media posts seeking more information on Dias.
The response was staggering.
She was getting calls from people all over the country who claimed to have been ripped off by Dias.
When she sat down to speak to the ODT last year, there were three interruptions from people wanting to vent about their dealings with him.
It was only a matter of time before Dias messed with the wrong woman.
Ms Hill was her.
“The reason I’m doing it is because he’s not going to continue to do this to women,” she said.
“It’s always easier just to let it go and be like, ‘let’s forget about that’.
“It doesn’t rest that easy with me.
“I’m standing up for every other woman that he’s going to continue to do this to. And someone’s got to stand up for the sisterhood.”
There is a solace to be found in being part of a collective and as Dias’ victims passed on details of others, the web grew.
The ODT spoke to people from almost every area of the man’s life.
There was a trade-hire business that said Dias was now blacklisted after failing to pay his bills, workers who said Dias still owed them holiday pay, a Wanaka motel chasing him for money and many more.
His former partner in Brazil, Bruna Vieira, said she had lent him cash for what she thought was a holiday to New Zealand while she was three months into a high-risk pregnancy.
Dias had not returned.
“I raised my son alone,” she said.
The list goes on.
Manager of Christchurch’s The Mud Bar Karthik Rangharaj said Dias had positioned himself as a promoter for New York-based Latin band Bachata Heightz.
A concert was scheduled for last weekend and a music video was to be filmed at the venue.
It sounded “fascinating”, Mr Rangahraj said.
He said Dias organised ticketing but when he asked the bar for $6500 as a downpayment, they pulled the pin.
A post on the Facebook page distanced themselves from the gig and directed inquiries to promoter “Echx Marks”, the only online presence of which appears to be an Instagram page set up solely to push the Bachata Heightz event.
“Small team, big shows … you’ll know where to find us,” the bio said.
There were no contact details attached.
Debby* had gone through hell with the build of her Southland home but it was finally finished by September 2024.
Dias sent her a quote for an extensive paint job and said his team would be done by the end of October.
“Thank you so much for sharing your heart … [we] will make sure to bring glory and joy to you both,” he messaged Debby and her partner after an initial meeting.
But by the following months there were the first quibbles from Dias about progress payments being made.
It would become a feature of their increasingly fraught conversations.
Debby complained about the work while Dias badgered her for more money, vowing to have the job done by the deadline.
On a single day, he sent a flurry of messages.
“Just seeing if you were able last night to get that amount for us.”
“Any chance your able to get that 25% for us?”
“Still not in . . . hope you can make this.”
The next day, it continued.
“Could you please sort the payment for us now please … I’m a man of my words and I will make sure we comply the job as planned. I’m not like other painters,” (sic) Dias wrote.
“I’m a good man.”
It was a mixture of lies and truths.
He was not like other painters.
Just before Christmas, Debby’s patience ended.
She had paid 80% of the quoted price and her home remained a work in progress.
The Disputes Tribunal heard about the extent of the issues: poor cutting in; grit and paint runs in the paint film; paint on hinges; inconsistent and uneven paint finishes; poor filling and misses in the painting.
“The standard of preparation and painting throughout the house is significantly below acceptable professional standards,” a Master Painters report noted.
Dias accepted there were defects with the work and put the delays down to “other issues in the business”.
The tribunal ordered him to pay Debby $14,145 by December last year.
The money never came and if she wanted to pursue Dias, just like Heidi before her, it would be at her cost and effort.
“What really upsets me is that people like this can get away with it because there is nothing to stop them. He can go on like this for years,” Debby said.
“He’s a professional con man. And he’s allowed to get away with it.”
The ODT spoke to other homeowners whose stories were almost identical — broken promises, delays, constant begging for cash and, ultimately, work unfinished.
One woman voiced her frustration to the Disputes Tribunal before it awarded her $12,431.
“I continuously get every excuse under the sun — ‘I’ll be there tomorrow’, ‘I’ll be there next week’, ‘sorry my worker is sick’, ‘my worker is on annual leave’, ‘sorry we’ve been busy’, lie after lie.”
It was not only Dias’ clients who were being shortchanged.
TJ Pyper was one of his first employees, contracted in 2021 when Level Up was first established.
Mr Pyper, who was based in Gisborne, only had a year of experience on the tools and was surprised to learn his new boss had not contacted his references before offering him the role.
“He seemed really desperate to get someone on at the start,” he said.
When work was slow, Dias would fly him down to Dunedin and, like others, he said the Brazilian initially made a positive impression with his enthusiastic demeanour.
“He was giddy and happy and just kind of upbeat and joyful all the time,” Mr Pyper said.
“When things weren’t going well, that side of him kind of fell away.”
Problems arose, he said, because of Dias undercutting other companies with his low quotes.
The work was coming in but so were the complaints.
“His main focus was just getting jobs done fast and moving on to the next, getting his money,” Mr Pyper said.
At its peak, the business employed about a dozen painters, the former worker said.
About half of them were Brazilian and had varying skill levels.
“One was good, a couple mediocre, two or three below, like, way below,” Mr Pyper said.
Level Up was granted accredited employer status with Immigration New Zealand in September 2022.
Maria* was granted a work visa to enter the country to be employed by Dias a couple of months later.
While she did not want to discuss her situation, the ODT has viewed documents which chart the collapse of the working relationship.
Maria first raised her concerns she had not been paid in December 2024, to which Dias responded it would be sorted “first thing in the morning”
A fortnight later, he sent an email to the entire team explaining wages had not been transferred “due to clients not having available funds to pay their accounts by the due date plus system issues from the payroll system”.
Dias was working hard through the holidays to rectify the situation, he reassured them.
By January, Maria was desperate.
Her strained finances meant she was struggling to pay rent and other bills, her phone calls to Dias went unanswered.
He emailed back, though, saying he was still waiting on payment for a “big job”.
Maria was also getting calls from hotels about unpaid bills.
She was not the only one.
In January 2025, the Tenancy Tribunal ordered Dias to pay a Blenheim property-management firm $2181 for rent arrears, plus forfeit of his bond of $2320.
NCO Properties director Neal Williams said his dealings with Dias left him with a distinct impression of the man.
“It’s not like he accidentally got into financial strife in a one-off situation. It’s deliberate,” he said.
“He just kind of promises everything but delivers nothing.”
Money eventually trickled down to staff but by May there was a recurrence in the salary delays.
“I’m currently travelling [to a job out of Dunedin] with no money, constantly having to ask — often beg — for food allowance, and every time there’s an excuse, but no payment,” Maria wrote in one email.
The following month, Dias advised her she was being made redundant “due to a significant downturn in workload and serious cash flow constraints”.
In July last year, Maria was granted a migrant exploitation visa and though Level Up was mentioned in the documentation, it did not spark an investigation into the company’s practices.
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment deputy chief operating officer Jeannie Melville said such a finding did not automatically affect an employer’s accreditation status.
It was later that Immigration New Zealand’s probe into Dias began.
Sources told the ODT in recent weeks there had been an investigation into potential people trafficking and employee exploitation.
It is understood Dias had been referenced in paperwork by several people seeking entry into the country, outside his accredited employer status.
One was turned round at the border, a source said.
There have been also questions raised about how Dias ever obtained a visa for New Zealand in the first place.
Several Brazilian court cases reference his full name and a pseudonym Keven Lima Dias and most of them refer to Minas Gerais, where he was born, or the bordering state of Sao Paulo.
Two of the cases refer to allegations of an unpaid account at a commercial paint shop.
The ODT has been unable to verify whether they definitively refer to Dias but it is understood they were being assessed by immigration officials.
Ms Melville said no detail could be provided about the investigation “as doing so could affect the integrity of our processes”.
She said she could not discuss any immigration matters in relation to Dias without a privacy waiver but confirmed he had left the country.
If he tried to return to New Zealand he would be stopped at the border, sources confirmed.
Dias , at present, has driving charges before the Christchurch District Court.
A warrant has been issued for his arrest.
The ODT contacted Dias on various social media platforms and sought comment by email but received no response.
*Names changed to protect anonymity